Phonological awareness is:
- a language skill learned before phonics instruction begins.
- includes the ability to separate oral language into syllables and individual phonemes (sounds).
- is learned through singing, tapping syllables, rhyming, and dividing words into individual sounds.
When children are read to, they begin to develop concepts of print such as:
- understanding what an author is
- understanding what an illustrator is
- identifying text features including the front and back of a book, reading top to bottom, reading left to right, and the meaning of punctuation.
After children hear stories repeatedly, they begin to develop concepts of word in text such as:
- pointing to words as they recite parts they have memorized
- learning letter-sound correspondence in parallel as they see and hear that each letter makes a sound
